


whatever we call beautiful

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, One Shot, angstangstangst that's me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 20:26:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18431483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Gavin thinks Connor is likely the most beautiful person he's ever met--both on the inside and the out. Connor doesn't necessarily agree.





	whatever we call beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chibbers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibbers/gifts).



> [written from a prompt list over on my tumblr](https://norchloe.tumblr.com/post/183607047172/nearly-200-writing-prompts-feel-free-to-reblog) #64 and #177: "You're so beautiful."

Connor is beautiful. Not necessarily on the outside, although he is beautiful on the outside. Pale skin, brown eyes, brown hair. Always wearing that android uniform except when they’re at home, stealing clothes from Gavin’s closet and pulling them around his body like a shield. He’s beautiful in the mornings when his hair isn’t quite perfect anymore, when his expressions are pulled down with exhaustion. Like turning into a deviant enabled a program where his face has to show how tired he is.

Gavin appreciates that—knowing what Connor is feeling. They are both extraordinarily closed off from each other, even after months of dating. Gavin doesn’t know what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking. They hug and they kiss and sometimes when they’re upset they’ll go to one another but only for distractions. Not to talk about the underlying issue. Push that aside, leave it for something else. He’s much happier when Connor is kissing him and tugging him over to the television, flipping through channels for him until there’s something light-hearted enough that he doesn’t have to focus on the rotten feelings in his chest.

There is very little said between them about the stuff beneath the surface. Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to tell Connor he loves him if he can’t even tell him the reasons behind his nightmares. The voice at the back of his head telling him again and again that maybe he isn’t good enough.

When he looks at Connor, he sees someone beautiful. It took him a few weeks to admit it to himself—even though all androids are designed to be at some height of beauty, some unachievable goal. Things to make people feel better. Nobody wants an ugly android wandering through their house, cleaning up their messes. So much nicer to make them like gold, like an assistant that would be on their hands and knees begging to do their dirty work. Nothing better than ugly souls feeling better than the help.

It took him a few weeks, but he got there. Watching him from across the room, feeling the thing in his chest mutate every second he stared. Stupid boy. Doing this to him. Every day the hate in his chest switching its direction from an android that never asked to be built, never asked to exist, and back to himself. Back to the wretched boy. The barely contained disaster. Back to himself where it belongs.

He hates and he hates and he  _ hates _ .

He hates that he noticed how beautiful Connor is. But if he hadn’t noticed, he never would have gotten close.

Because Connor is beautiful and it isn’t just an outside thing. It’s an inside thing. Maybe that hurts, too. Knowing how ugly Gavin’s interiors are, knowing how terribly they align with Connor’s. His conscious isn’t clean but he is actively scrubbing at it, doing the best he can to make it better. Gavin watches him do small acts of kindness every day, laughing and smiling and getting close with the people around him. Smoothing out the past and providing it with the possibility of a brighter future.

He’s incredible. Gavin doesn’t understand it. How he can see how terrible the world is, see the awful things CyberLife forced him to do, things he went along with maybe not because he didn’t have another choice but because he never cared enough to find a different course of action.

Connor is strange and unusual. Seeing the good in the world when so much bad exists. Maybe to him it’s easy to find it. It’s not for Gavin. It’s so much easier to find the inky blackness and wallow in it. Wrap himself up in it like a sweater knitted from darkness. Hold on tight. Never let go. Surround himself with things that desensitize him from it. No need to cry when he’s already seen it all, when the tears have already been split so many times there’s nothing left.

Connor is beautiful. Incredible. Wonderful.

Gavin doesn’t deserve him, but he’s glad he’s here. He’s glad that he wakes up too tired to keep his eyes open and he’ll feel a kiss pressed against his cheek and a smile against his skin that infects him in an instant. He’s glad that when he’s barely out of the shower there’s a cup of coffee pressed in his hands. He’s glad when there are arms wrapped around his waist and he can lean back and melt into somebody that he knows will hold him. He’s glad that at night time he can watch his stupid beautiful face drift off to sleep while he lingers on, unable to close his eyes or unable to let his brain stop thinking long enough to shut down like Connor’s can.

Gavin’s glad for every little bit of an interaction he can steal from Connor. Kisses on the way to work. Lunch breaks filled with jokes. Finding himself on his own, head spinning with the thought of Connor and a smile breaking across his face that he can’t stop because Connor makes him  _ happy _ .

He never thought he’d get that.

He thought after the last person that left him that he would never have this again, would never deserve it. He worries constantly that it’s going to disappear. No matter how tightly he holds on. He had his one shot at love and it abandoned him. He whispers  _ I love you  _ like it will convince Connor to stay. He feels a little guilty every time he says it. Like he needs Connor to know and remind him that Connor is meant to love him back.

Gavin is unsure what he did to deserve such a beautiful person in his life.

_ Nothing,  _  a voice tells him. He did absolutely  _ nothing _ .

  
  


The first time he says it, he’s drunk. Not drunk enough to forget it or the thoughts swirling in his head when the words tumbled from his lips, a little slurred together and muffled against Connor’s neck.

“You’re so beautiful.”

It elicits a laugh, nervous and a bit awkward, but an arm still wrapping around his waist and tugging him against his body.

“You’re drunk,” Connor replies.

“I’m still right.”

“Gavin—”

He leans away from him, leaving scattered kisses against Connor’s face and neck where he can reach, the words said again and again in the hopes that maybe somehow Connor might understand what he means by them. How he is too drunk to fully explain that he doesn’t just mean Connor’s stupid face or his body but the rest of him, too. His heart. His soul. Things he thought didn’t exist just because the rest of him might be made out of plastic.

He almost—

_ Almost— _

Ends the chain with  _ I love you. _

But it’s too early for them. Not enough time has passed for him to feel like he’s been given the right to say it. He’s not even sure if he’d mean it, being this drunk, or if he just means that he loves how much Connor has made him feel better about himself just by existing.

  
  


A few months into their relationship, when Gavin makes Connor spend the night as much as possible to feel a little less alone, he catches him in the bathroom, head turned and watching his LED. Gavin hides in the doorway, looks in the darkness as it switches from yellow to red. Hardly ever blue. He doesn’t think he knows what specific shade of blue it is anymore. The boy is always thinking to in-depth on a topic or in too much pain to be anything else.

Gavin watches Connor as his hand moves up, fingers tracing the circle, covering it up in the darkness and sending them both into the black without even a faint light to guide them.

“Does it bother you?” Connor asks, turning to face him. 

“The LED? It’s a little bright, but—”

“I meant…” Connor trails off and shakes his head, moving his fingers away from the LED. Red, yellow, red, yellow—

“You mean you being an android?”

He shrugs.  _ Maybe, maybe. _

Gavin crosses the room towards him, a hand moving to his waist, the other tilting to his head so he can leave a kiss against Connor’s lips. Not quite tall enough to leave a proper one against his LED without stretching up, without the free of Connor pushing him away.

“No. It doesn’t. Not even a little bit.”

Except maybe in twenty years when he gets old and gray and Connor will be stuck caring for an old man. But if he’s honest with himself, they likely won’t last more than two, and that is pushing his luck. Of course he wants decades and decades with Connor. That doesn’t mean he’ll get it.

He is cursed. His relationships are always a tangle of never giving him what he wants. Commitment when he isn’t ready for it, pushing people away and refusing to stay with them because he didn’t want a life with  _ them _ , he just wanted a fling to make himself feel a little bit better. Or—

Or, he wants the world. He wants the future. He wants a lifetime.

But  _ they  _ don’t.

He wants a lifetime with Connor, and he is relying on his history of telling him that this won’t last. It never does when he wants more.

“I love you,” he says quietly. “I’m not going to say that I don’t care that you’re an android. It’s part of you. I can’t… ignore that. It doesn’t bother me.”

“You hate androids.”

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t. I hate… I  _ hated… _ ”

He trails off, because he wants to say he hated  _ Connor _ . But he didn’t. He just hated what Connor could have been. The future of humans being killed off and turned into nothing. A world overrun by androids. What is the point in androids replacing every single job and every single human when they weren’t even going to allow them even a fraction of the rights they deserved?

“I love you,” he repeats. “I didn’t hate androids. I don’t hate androids. I just hate everything else.”

And that much is true.

He goes through his day feeling angry at everything that moves. He doesn’t know how to explain himself. It is so fucking difficult to get his words out sometimes. He wishes he had a way to say things, a way to write them out and put them in an order that makes sense. His thoughts are messy and complicated and even the parts he does understand are too complex to be able to fit into a few sentences or in a way that would have any sense of coherent thought.

So when he says this, he hopes Connor at least understands a little bit of what he’s trying to get across.

“Gavin—”

“I love you,” he says a third time, kissing him again, leaning up on tiptoes to press his lips against the LED. “Connor—”

He’s pushed backwards a little bit. It takes him off guard, making him stumble a few steps back. Connor’s hand moves to his mouth, pressed over it.

“Sh-Shut up for a second, okay?” he whispers. “Just. Be quiet. For once.”

He nods.

“Y-you…” he trails off and pulls his hand away, turning so that Gavin can’t see what color the LED is shifting to. “You’ve never said that before.”

He doesn’t know what Connor is referring to: the  _ I love you  _ part, or the  _ android  _ part.

Either. Both.

“I don’t want it anymore,” Connor says quietly. “I need… I need to get rid of it.”

“The LED?” he asks, because he needs clarification that the  _ it  _ he’s talking about isn’t  _ them. _

“It doesn’t bother you but it bothers me. I hate… seeing it. I hate—” he pauses and looks back to him, his eyes wide like he’s suddenly remember something. “I love you, too.”

Gavin smiles, soft and sweet and sad. Reaching out tentatively for Connor’s hand, holding onto it tight.

“You don’t have to keep it. Just don’t get rid of it because you think I hate you being an android. I don’t. I love you—” he sighs and takes a step forward, wrapping his arms around him tightly, wishing that he was the taller one so he could feel like he was protecting him. “It’s your decision. Make it your decision. Don’t do it because of me.”

He can feel Connor nodding, moving against Gavin to rest against him and he pulls him tighter, wishing that he could get across all he means in a simple hug.

“It reminds me of who I used to be,” he whispers. “I don’t want to be that person. I hate him.”

“Con…”

“He was terrible. And cruel. And wrong.”

Words that Gavin turns against himself, thinking about the ugly weight in his chest.

_ You’re different,  _ Tina told him once,  _ with Connor, you’re different. _

_ Better. _

“Ugly,” Connor whispers. “I was hideous. It makes me feel hideous.”

He knows what he means by the way he says it. Not a surface thing, even if they are referencing the LED. It’s an inside thing. A hideous soul marred by bad decisions. He knows exactly what Connor is saying because he has said it a thousand times. The scar on his face was caused because he was too selfish and drunk and rude to keep himself in check. Every time he looks at it he feels like the same monster he was before. 

He knows he still is.

_ Better.  _ Better.

Still not a good person. Still not worthy.

But this moment between them, he understands what Connor is saying and he understands it’s not about him.

“You’re not hideous,” Gavin says quietly, moving away far enough to leave a kiss against his temple again, another against his cheek, a last one lingering against his lips. “You’re beautiful, Connor.”

And he knows this time Connor understands what he means by the word  _ beautiful  _ because there’s a smile against his kiss. Soft. Sweet. Sad.

  
  


He keeps his LED for a few more weeks. Each morning starts with a kiss against it, one returned to Gavin’s jaw and then his neck. Mornings spent with Connor being the one small and curled up against Gavin, needing a tiny bit of protection. It isn’t often that he wants it. Wants to be the one that feels like he’s caged in. But he needs it. He feels weak and helpless and like he can’t be the one to keep Gavin safe right now. Like he needs the arms wrapped around him, like he needs the chest to hide his face in.

It’s nice—feeling cared for.

Gavin kisses him more and more often against the LED. Reassurance again and again that it’s not the android part of him that keeps a wall between them. Something else. Trauma. Separate.

He still wants it gone. It still makes him feel like a terrible person every time he looks in the mirror or someone comments that it’s turned another color. He skips going to Gavin’s one night, digging the edge of scissors into the side of his head, wincing against the pain before it clatters against the floor.

It’s fine.

He’s fine.

His vision is fuzzy and disorientated for a moment, his body adjusting to the lack of it. But better.

Better.

Less hideous.

Although all of that disgusting nature still sits on the inside.

He thought after that Gavin would say something, that maybe the kisses against his temple would fade away without a reminder sitting there that he’s an android. But he doesn’t and they don’t. He still leaves kisses there, still smiles against it when he laughs late at night. Still passes by his desk in the DPD and swoops down to place one there when he isn’t looking.

Sometimes, even, lingers long enough to whisper quiet words against his skin. Promises for the night ahead or Connor coming with him on his next case or stopping together to have some time at lunch. Sometimes even commenting on him—saying how beautiful he is, how incredible he is, how Connor makes him happy. Mostly—

Mostly it is

_ I love you. _

And he never gets the chance to return it. Gavin is always running away, disappearing back to his work.

  
  


Neither of them are really what they expected when it comes to sex.

He thought, from hearing Gavin’s stories, spoken loudly to annoy the other people in the DPD, to make Connor jealous before they were together, that Gavin was always going to be a sexual person. Somebody that made Connor feel he had to open up before he was ready for it. Somebody that would feel intimidating and strange to be with. But he wasn’t. He kissed him like he wanted it but he never pried and he never asked. He was good at reading Connor’s body language, and even when he wasn’t he would ask the questions that would result in Connor hiding his face and shaking his head and saying  _ no, no, no— _

And then there would be nothing.

He doesn’t know what it is. Why he keeps stopping himself. Gavin reassures him again and again that it was okay, that they should wait until Connor wants it and is ready for it before they go any further. It didn’t have a time frame. There wasn’t an expiration date on their relationship just because Gavin couldn’t have sex with him.

It was good. They were good. They were solid and real and Connor could lay next to him in the bed without worrying that something was going to happen or that Gavin hated him because he wouldn’t measure up to anyone else who laid here before.

But—

Neither of them are really what they expected.

It takes months before Connor feels comfortable enough to let Gavin’s hand slide up under his shirt which he tries to do every morning when he wraps his arms around Connor’s waist. It takes even longer before he’s able to change his clothes in front of him, often still hiding and moving too quickly for Gavin to watch for too long. Not that he does. He averts his eyes every single time.

But it takes a year before either of them undress each other. Weeks of the two of them just placing kisses in spots they hadn’t yet seen or touched or claimed as their own. Scars that had stories that Gavin couldn’t fully explain or tell. Things on Connor’s body from before that weren’t very noticeable to anyone but himself or someone that was looking for them. Faint and barely visible. Cleaned away and unnoticed.

But Gavin notices them.

His fingers move along his thigh across faint markings. Tracing the curve of a strange shape, a question on his lips that’s never spoken.

_ Did you do this to yourself? _

He can’t answer that. He doesn’t want to know what Gavin would say or feel if he replied with the truth.

They spend weeks exploring each other’s bodies without ever making it sexual. Gentle and soft and nothing more than comfort and getting to know one another on an entirely different level. They fall asleep naked in each other’s arms and Connor always wakes up first to cover his body back up.

His scars aren’t as visible as Gavin’s. They aren’t as noticeable and may not even contain the same type of trauma that he has. But he doesn’t like them. They are easy to show at night time, they are easy to allow to be touched when the lights are dimmed and it feels just like him and Gavin.

But when the sun comes up and it feels like a hand is wrapped around his throat and choking him—

He doesn’t want anyone to see them.

Least of all himself.

  
  


The first time they try to have sex, it doesn’t last very long. Connor stops him before they get very far, blinking tears from his eyes and pushing him away. He thought he was ready and he wasn’t. Five minutes of Gavin’s mouth on his, pressed inside of him and he just—

Can’t do it.

He runs away and hides in the bathroom, curled up tight and whispering apologies over and over despite the fact Gavin can’t hear him. 

The second time, a few weeks later, it lasts a fraction longer. Gavin telling him again and again that he can stop if he wants to. He knows that. He knows Gavin won’t hate him for it. But sometimes it hurts. Not a physical pain, but an emotional one. Like he shouldn’t be allowed to have this.

How many people did he kill and how much harm did he cause and he’s allowed to be here, in love and happy and laugh and feel pleasure that so many androids had ripped from them?

It’s unfair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers every single time they try, every single time he starts to cry and says he can’t do it.

Sometimes it is at the beginning, when Gavin’s hands are on him, pressing against his body in a way that says it wants more. Sometimes it is closer to the end, when he knows he is probably a minute from climaxing and he has to shove Gavin back and feel the regret course through him.

Gavin doesn’t get angry with him. He doesn’t get annoyed or impatient. But Connor wonders how many times it will take Gavin having to finish himself off before he’s tired of Connor not doing it for him. As if it’s a job. As if it’s his duty as a boyfriend to do this.

“Connor,” Gavin says quietly, holding him close, leaving a trail of kisses along the scar that follows the shape of his ribcage. “You’re beautiful.”

He wants to cry. He always wants to cry. It started out as nothing. Something that amused him. Made him laugh, made him smile. But now every time Gavin says it, it brings tears to his eyes.

Maybe he means it. Maybe he doesn’t.

It doesn’t matter.

Connor lifts his chin up, kisses him back and tries for the hundredth time in the span of their relationship to give Gavin something he wants. He doesn’t understand how it is so easy for him to say he loves Gavin but so difficult for him to let hands touch him like this. His body wasn’t made for it—

Not like this.

He was given the parts if he needed to go undercover at the Eden Club. He was meant to be used and left behind if a mission ever required it. He was not meant for  _ this _ . He wasn’t meant for  _ love _ . He wasn’t built for  _ affection _ . It feels wrong just like every single emotion he’s ever had. Something to push away and pretend it doesn’t exist.

“Gavin—”

“We can stop,” he says quietly, placing a kiss against his cheek. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s just—Can we—Can I—”

He just wants it to be slow. Slow enough that it feels like they aren’t even doing anything. A buildup into it. Like it’s sneaking up on him. Slower than the times Gavin tried before. Only a fraction more sexual than when Gavin spends the night decorating his body with kisses, never asking for anything more, never even wanting anything more than just to hold him.

Gavin nods, like he gets it and he pulls away, “You lead.”

“Me?” he laughs, but it’s not quite a laugh. Nerves and awkwardness tangled together. “I’ve never—”

“It’s fine. Take your time.”

He wants to make a joke because this stupid and silly and not at all like it would work, but he watches as Gavin leans back against the headboard, even pulls the blanket to cover himself which—

Helps. A little.

Not like he hasn’t seen it. Not like he hasn’t felt it. Not like they haven’t been here a hundred times already.

And it isn’t as if he doesn’t know what sex is. After their first almost-time he spent hours and hours watching videos to try and figure out what he was meant to do, what he was doing wrong and what he was doing right. He’s not an idiot. He knows porn doesn’t match up to the real thing. He knows it isn’t the same.

But at least he knew the basics. At least when he leans forward and moves onto Gavin’s lap, even if his hands are holding back tremors and his body feels like it’s about to break apart, he knows what he’s supposed to do.

“If your nervous, maybe we shouldn’t—”

“I’m always going to be nervous,” he says quietly, “It’s not going to go away.”

Still.

He wishes he had a shirt to unbutton. A task to focus on instead of feeling Gavin’s eyes on him. Watched. Always watched. Sometimes he thinks he can feel CyberLife still in the back of his head, watching him. Maybe getting off to this. Stealing his emotional pain as data to fight back against deviants with. Who knows. Conspiracy theories and paranoia circling his head like lunacy.

“Can you close your eyes?” he whispers.

Gavin nods and complies and Connor hesitates there. For a long time he just stays, staring at Gavin’s face, eyes closed, peaceful almost. He leans forward, kisses Gavin in a way that is soft and small and doesn’t invite more.

He thinks, maybe, the problem with all those videos and all his past and everything that has accumulated into this comparison between strangers that Gavin has been with throughout the years—

It has given him a complex. That he has to be louder, better, bigger. Maybe he could be. He knows how the Eden Club androids are programmed. To act like them. He knows he has pieces of those programming in himself. How he can be overly sensitive and cum five times in a few minutes because it’s somebody’s kink or being able to last for hours until the other one is left exhausted and raw.

He just wants to be him. He doesn’t want to be programming that somebody else wants from him. But he doesn’t know who he is in any part of his life. He’s spent nights alone with his hand wrapped around himself or fingers pressed inside of him trying to figure out where and what  _ he  _ is but he can never quite anchor it down. All he knows is he wants to go slow. He wants this to be something that isn’t rushed. Gavin forcing it to be over as quick as possible wouldn’t do anything to help him. It would only make him feel more like a worthless piece of plastic. Plush and soft so the person on the other end can get off.

“Y-You can touch me,” he whispers quietly. What he means is  _ please touch me.  _ He feels strange and awkward not having Gavin’s hands on him, holding him properly like he usually does. It makes him feel bare and empty and lost.

And they appear, fingertips on his hips, moving up slowly, hands flattening across his back and they feel comforting. Solid. Warm. Keeping him grounded here instead of the cold in the room.

“Connor,” he says quietly, leaning forward, pressing lips against his neck. “I love you.”

_ You don’t have to do this,  _ he doesn’t say for the millionth time. Not because he doesn’t mean it, not because it isn’t true, just because it doesn’t need to be spoken anymore. Connor knows. He knows he can leave whenever he wants and Gavin would be okay with it.

It’s not the first time, not even the tenth time, that Connor has been the one to help guide Gavin inside of him. It’s not the first time in this position or this time of night or with Gavin leaning so close to him it feels—

Wrong.

_ Good _ .

An in-between.

Wrong because he doesn’t deserve it, good because he wants it.

He moves slowly. Slow enough that he knows if this wasn’t their possible real-first time, maybe Gavin would be making jokes and calling him a tease. Maybe he should. Maybe it would take some of the pressure off of him. Turning it into a joke instead of something real.

He doesn’t even know if he can classify himself as a virgin with how many times they’ve done this same thing. He doesn’t know if he cares. 

And it’s embarrassing how sensitive he even is. Hiding his moans against Gavin’s lips, tasting his in return, eyes shut tight because he thinks if he looks or sees Gavin’s face he might start to cry.

It’s fine. He’s ready for this. He wants it. He is always going to be nervous. But Gavin’s hands move to his, hold the fingers tight.  _ You don’t have to do this. _

No. But he  _ wants  _ to.

“Gavin,” he whispers back, moving on of his hands so Gavin’s touching him, letting go of his fingers and replacing them around his cock. A silent plea for him to touch him instead of holding his hand. “I love you, too.”

There’s a tiny, barely audible laugh against his lips. Amusement out of this that makes Connor smile too.

Gavin’s hand around him matches his speed and he didn’t realize how slow it was, how it wasn’t enough, how he wanted more until he finds himself moving quicker against him, wanting his hand to make faster strokes. Before he could kiss him, lazily and slow and now he can only lean against him, biting on his bottom lip because he’s either making noise or trying to get air into his lungs.

Is this what it’s like for humans? Feeling like they’re going to break down? Always wanting more?

He doesn’t have the urge to push him away anymore. To shove him back and get away from him. He just wants Gavin closer. He isn’t close enough. He feels so far away but he knows, logically speaking, there is very little of their skin that isn’t touch. There’s a hand on his back, steadying Connor, there are kisses pressed to his throat and Connor’s hands are tangled in his hair wishing and wishing and wanting and—

“F-fuck,” he mumbles.

He wasn’t expecting it. He got caught up. Distracted. Moving too fast and thinking about too many other things and he trembles and quivers and falls to a stop but Gavin’s hand keeps moving and he can’t keep all these random expletives from falling from his mouth, things that seem to make Gavin laugh and he can feel him smiling and he wants to smack him for it.

“You don’t swear very often.”

“Shut up,” he whispers. And he starts to move again, needs for Gavin to finish especially since he knows it won’t take long, barely much movement and the mouth against his neck is pulling back into teeth like it wants to mark him, wants to bite down into his plastic and take ownership.

Let him.

It’s fine.

_ He wants it.  _ He wishes he could have hickeys on his neck so people know that he belongs to someone. It feels imbalanced, with how many times Gavin has gone to work, showing them off like a badge of honor. How many times he’s seen some of the other people in the DPD roll their eyes and look away because they didn’t need to think about Connor doing that to him. Sometimes all he really wants is to be the human Gavin should have in his life and not the android that stumbled into it.

  
  


“Con?” another kiss placed against his temple. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

“What? Sex?”

He sits up slowly, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, leaving Gavin alone in the bed while he hides himself away in the sheets.

“Happiness.”

“Con—”

“Was it even any good?” he asks quietly. Gavin reaches forward, tries to turn him back to face him, to pull the blanket away from his face and expose his features. “It’s not.. It’s.. I’ve never done it. It wasn’t any good, was it? I’m… I’m not like them.”

“Them?”

“The other people you’ve been with.”

Gavin’s arm wraps around the mass of fabric that Connor’s cocooned himself in, holding him tight. He can’t kiss him like he usually does. Leaving a sporadic placement, scattering them against his skin as if it will do absolutely anything to help this.

“You’re not. You’re better. I actually love you.”

Connor laughs, but it’s humorless and dry and short and not at all like the ones he usually forces out. And he gets it. He can understand it. Not being enough. Terrified of not being good enough. Terrified that one thing is going to force them apart. This isn’t going to force them apart.

He’s not going to let it force them apart.

“I need you to know it wasn’t… They didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t with them because I wanted to have sex, okay?”

“I don’t understand—”

“I love you. It was good. You don’t need to be experienced for me to like it. You don’t need to be like them.”

_ You don’t want to be like them.  _ Sex used to make him forget, to make him feel better, to put everything else on pause. Being with Connor is different. It’s better. A thousand times better simply just because Connor wants him beyond a few minutes in bed together.

“You’re not lying to make me feel better?”

“No. Absolutely not. Connor? Can you look at me?”

He twists in Gavin’s arms, lets the blanket fall from around his face and looks over to him as Gavin sits up, carefully taking his face in his hands.

“I need you to understand something, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You deserve happiness,” Gavin says quietly, placing a kiss against his lips. Brief and soft. “You deserve every star in the galaxy laid out at your feet and a thousand diamonds in your hair.”

“That’s a book quote, you stole that—”

Gavin kisses him again, silences him and feels Connor’s lips turn into a smile against his and it makes him smile too, breaking their perfect kiss into something maybe a little better.

“You can’t steal quotes from books,” Connor whispers. “It’s only romantic if you come up with it yourself.”

“That’s not true,” Gavin’s arms wrap around him. “I still mean it. As long as I mean it, it doesn’t matter. And I’m not trying to be romantic I’m just trying to tell you the truth.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

“Thank you,” Connor says quietly. “For the… for everything.”

He nods and presses another kiss against his lips, lowering his voice quietly as he speaks, “I need you to know that it doesn’t matter what you did before, Con, you’re different now. You’re trying to be different now. You’re better. You’re good. You do deserve it.”

“The diamonds?”

“The stars, too.”

“And the happiness,” he whispers.

“Especially the happiness.”

“You do, too, Gavin,” Connor says. “You deserve to be happy, too.”

That is up for debate, but it’s not something he feels he can argue with Connor about right now. Their relationship right now is good. Positive. The more Gavin says about his past, the more Connor will start to see the traces of his father’s anger in his eyes or the brutality of his childhood in his actions. He doesn’t want Connor to see those things. He doesn’t want to have a mysterious and exciting aura about him, he just wants Connor to keep loving him until he finds out about how he got the scar on his nose or the ones on his body. All the people he hurt, like the blood will appear on his hands again.

He kisses him again, lets it last as long as he can possibly manage, the two of them falling against the mattress, a hand in his hair, pulling him closer, closer, closer.

  
  


The first time he’s aware of Connor doing it, he hasn’t quite drifted off to sleep. Stuck in the strange in-between space where he is neither awake nor asleep. Anything could have woken him up. A subtle shift of Connor’s body next to him would’ve pulled him out, startled him back into the waking world with the feeling that he was asleep, the inkling that maybe he had a dream, but knowing full well he never fell through completely. No strange details of vivid dreams lingering in his head, but some small sense of rest.

“Sorry,” Connor says, pulling his hand away, fingers leaving the scar on his nose alone where they had been tracing the curve of the shape. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He shakes his head, pretends that it didn’t happen, closes his eyes and turns his face against Connor’s body, hiding the scar, hiding the reminder of his ugly history, burying it deep down so Connor won’t be able to see it.

It isn’t the only time. When Connor thinks he’s asleep, he’s tracing that scar. Light touches. Things he barely notices until the fingers touch one of the smaller ones on the side of his face from the shrapnel that was embedded in his skin. Feather-light kisses paired with them against his forehead, sometimes pulling him closer, holding onto him and not letting him go.

There are other times, too. When he reaches out for Gavin and presses a kiss against his forehead and follows it with one against his nose, a last one against his lips with a smile against his.

He doesn’t know if he should tell Connor to stop. It bothers him but only in a strange sort of way that is either or. It bothers him because it reminds him of what he did, who he used to be, the kind of person he was. Every time he looks at that scar it isn’t just telling him how he got it in a bar fight but how many people he hurt. As a kid, as a teen, as an adult. It reminds him of punching Connor in the stomach, of holding a gun to his head, and he doesn’t know how to solve that. He doesn’t know how to ignore it.

But it’s nice, too. He knows Connor is likely aware that it came from violence. It doesn’t matter whose hand it was. It feels nice being treated with a tenderness he was never afforded. It’s selfish and wrong but when he does it, there is a reminder of who he used to be and a reminder that he can be  _ more _ .

Lovable, even.

It doesn’t stop his instant reaction to be pulling away from Connor when he does it sometimes. Turning his head so Connor’s last kiss lands against his cheek instead. Or at night when his hands come up and stop Connor’s from tracing it again and again and holding the fingers tight enough that he feels he might break them because he needs—

He needs it to stop, sometimes.

“Gavin,” his voice is quiet, whispered in the dark because once lights are turned off everything always seems so much louder. Like whispers and murmurs are the only acceptable volumes in a space like this.

Connor threads his fingers through Gavin’s, holding his hand and bringing them to his lips, brushing them across his knuckles. It’s better than them touching the scar, it’s better than being reminded of it existing. 

It doesn’t stop him from feeling like he doesn’t  _ deserve  _ it. Him and Connor are the same in that matter. Feeling like they aren’t allowed the happiness they’ve been given. Gavin wants to shove him away sometimes, kick him out so he can go back to wallowing like he deserves. Wrap himself up in blankets and cry until there aren’t tears anymore. Become numb and not have to feel anything but anger. Connor came into his life and ripped him open. Gave him thoughts and feelings that he didn’t have before.

If he loses this boy—

“I love you,” Connor says, before Gavin can. It makes him smile. Soft. Sweet.  _ Sad _ .

“I love you, too.”

“Gav—” he stops himself, leaning to press kisses against his face, avoiding the scar on his nose, leaving it for last. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

He’s not. Not in any sense of the word. Not on the outside and not on the inside. He doesn’t possess the kindness that Connor does. He isn’t funny like Tina and he isn’t even a fraction of a good person like Chris is. He’s not even capable of apologizing properly. He never has been.

And it’s not like he’s  _ hideous _ on the outside, but it isn’t like he has the same quality of attraction that Connor does. There is nothing slightly ethereal and otherworldly about him. There is nothing special. He is just a boy with a scar and a past.

He isn’t beautiful.

But he is tired and he doesn’t want to fight Connor and he knows, deep down, that he would never say it unless he believed it. Gavin can’t see it, but Connor  _ can _ . It’s—

Enough.

Enough to make him cry and enough to hide against Connor’s body and hope that the tears go away quickly. He feels Connor’s arms wrap tight around him and he breathes in a ragged breath, trying to normalize it, trying to do something else than  _ hurt.  _

“Gavin—” the arms constrict, making it harder to breathe but in a more pleasant way than the tears closing up his throat and keeping his lungs from inhaling properly. “You’re so beautiful, please don’t forget that.”

He won’t. He won’t. He won’t forget the first time someone has ever said it to him, even if he doesn’t believe it. Even if he never will.


End file.
